Saturday, March 11, 2006

Sandra Day O'Connor is no longer a Supreme Court justice. Unfettered, she is now free to speak a little more openly on her take of the state of the nation. That's what she did yesterday. I was so excited to learn that two congress members from Texas were featured in her speech. What a CREDIT to the state. (NOT!)**************From NPR.org:

"Supreme court justices keep many opinions private but Sandra Day O'Connor no longer faces that obligation. Yesterday, the retired justice criticized Republicans who criticize the courts.She said they challenge the independence of judges and the freedoms of all Americans."

As reported by Nina Totenberg of NPR News, Washington:

O'Connor's speech at G.U. was not available for broadcast but NPR legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg was there......

In an unusally forceful and forthright speech, O'Connor said that attacks on the judiciary by some Republican leaders pose a direct threat to our Constitutional freedoms. O'Connor began by conceding that courts do have the power to make presidents or the congress or governors, as she put it, really, really angry. But, she continued, if we don't make them mad some of the time, we probably are doing our jobs as judges. And our effectiveness, she said, is premised on the notion that we won't be subject to retaliation for our judicial acts.

The nation's founders wrote repeatedly, she said, that without an independent judiciary to protect individual rights from the other branches of government, those rights and privileges would amount to nothing. But, said O'Connor, as the founding fathers knew, statutes and constitutions don't protect judicial independence, people do.

And then she took aim at former House GOP leader, Tom DeLay. She didn't name him, but she quoted his attacks on the courts at a meeting of the conservative Christian group, Justice Sunday, last year when DeLay took out after the courts for rulings on abortion, prayer, and the Terri Schiavo case. This, said O'Connor, was after the federal courts had applied Congress' one time only statute about Chiavo as it was written, not, said O'Connor, as the congressman might have wished it were written.

The response to this flagrant display of judicial restraint said O'Connor, her voice dripping with sarcasm, was that the congressman blasted the courts! It gets worse she said, noting that death threats against judges are increasing.

It doesn't help, she said, when a high profile senator suggests there may be a connection between violence against judges and decisions that the senator disagrees with. She didn't name him but it was Texas Senator John Cornyn who made that statement after a Georgia judge was murdered in the courtroom and the family of a federal judge in Ill. murdered in the judge's home.

O'Connor observed that there have been a lot of suggestions lately for so-called judicial reforms, recommendations for the massive impeachment of judges, stripping the courts of jurisdiction and cutting judicial budgets to punish offending judges. Any of these might be debatable, she said, as long as they are not retaliation for decisions that political leaders disagree with.

"I," said O'Connor, "am against judicial reforms driven by nakedly partisan reasoning." Pointing to the experience of developing countries and former communist countries where interference with an independent judiciary has allowed dictatorship to flourish. O'Connor said, we must be ever vigilant against those who would strong arm the judiciary into adopting their preferred policies. It takes a lot of degeneration before a country falls into dictatorship she said, but we should avoid these ends by avoiding these beginnings.

5 comments:

Thanks for putting her words here- I wanted to sit and read WHAT she said- not just hear bits of soundbites on TV...I am astounded that she is taking such a stand and sending such a messege...she must be pretty pissed...

( There is a good discussion on over at Watergate...about Bobby Kennedy ( RFK)...and why weneed one now...meander over when you can..nice crowd at the Enigma Cafe today...)

e4e: NO SHE'S NOT....she's commenting here!! Here I was, already missing her and she hasn't even left yet! WTF?

Oh, maybe they're leaving tomorrow?

Yeh, that must be it. They had to postpone because she wasn't finished packing because she was listening to Bush while folding the clothes for the trip. So now she's got to "reiron" 'em for the wilderness.

I'm listening to RFK, Jr. Incredible show today. I missed so much...I'm going have to find an archive of this show.

I'll be over to the cafe a bit later e4e. Looking forward to it. Thanks for the invite Venu....whoops, er, e4e!

BTW....I was hesitant to post this O'Connor report because they SELL the transcripts on NPR. But I'd just finished transcribing it from the radio show when I discoverd that. So I consider it, and decided getting this out to a few people is MORE important that violating NPR's copyright to it.

Screw NPR....they should know getting the word out matters more...right?

( so I asked my son about the new "image" , she looks like a "worried hippy"...and he liked how she was looking over her shoulder...looking out for others...I said "You know it is Venus right?""Oh, yeah, but see I think Venus would have been a hippy, and I like that her hair doesn't look brushed and she is moving, or the wind is moving..."( that comment was because I had chosen a statue- a dig I think....)

Anyways there you go..an explanation of sorts...from the Art Director... ( what do I know ? I just work here)

THE BEGINNING IS NEAR

HUH?

You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, "Look at that, you son of a bitch."

— Edgar Mitchell, Apollo 14 astronaut, People magazine, 8 April 1974.

"Keep in mind that this planet is no model for rational thought, and that what passes for sanity here is sending chills down the spine of the remainder of the universe." E.T. 101

"An Empire’s power depends on its ability to control the cultural stories and language that shape our collective understanding of our world and our choices as a species. Empire stories induce a kind of cultural trance that conditions us to accept the dominator relations of Empire as just and righteous and to dismiss talk of alternatives as naïve, dangerous, or even sinful." ~ David Korten